Rose before Bros: Week 5

This week on everyone’s favorite train wreck of a television show, Jojo and her gaggle of men headed to Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is apparently the “city of love,” according Jojo, although I genuinely thought that was Paris. In our preview of the night, there is a whole lot of Jordan, as usual, a little bit of Alex, and almost no appearances by Wells, which does not bode well for my favorite player in this whole ordeal. The preview is pretty sparse, and for a good reason. If you just want the highlights of Monday’s episode, stop reading here. There were none. But if you want all of the gritty, sad details about America’s favorite garbage heap, continue on.

It’s clear this week that the show is struggling with the departure of its villain, Chad and pseudo-villain, Daniel, as well as with the lack of serious relationships developing between Jojo and the menfolk so far. While Robby did drop an “I love you,” I think we can all agree that it seemed disingenuous and oddly timed, so we’re left with Jordan and Luke as the front runners going into this episode.

The episode begins with the men having a talk with Dad Chris Harrison, who is apparently following them around the world or possibly living in Jordan’s suitcase. Chris announces that this week will have another 2-on-1 date, which he phrases as “unprecedented for the franchise,” even though there were two 2-on-1 dates last season of The Bachelor, although one poor girl had to endure both of them (and somehow made it out unscathed enough to go on Bachelor In Paradise). The first date card is given out, and it’s a one-on-one with Wells and Jojo. The card says something about a kiss in Spanish, and Wells explains to the guys that he has yet to kiss Jojo. This makes it outstandingly awkward. When Jojo comes to pick up Wells on the date, one of the guys who looks like Jordan but isn’t Jordan (Chase? Luke? Robby?), makes a comment about how Wells better give her the best kiss he’s ever given, and Jojo is like “please stop.” The date is largely “experience local culture,” and it keeps cutting back to the guys at the hotel speculating about what it would take for Wells to get a rose tonight.

Wells and Jojo go to a sort of performance art class, where they learn about how to do performance art and they roll around on this giant Slip-n-Slide/waterbed combo thing, where Wells smooches Jojo and she is very excited about it. This is followed by the dinner where no one eats, where Wells confesses that he’s sort of a realist and a normal human being who doesn’t think that “fairy tale love” is real, and Jojo looks like he shot her dog. Jojo tells Wells that while he’s a nice person, he’s not her nice person, and she doesn’t give him the rose, meaning he’ll be sent home immediately. He looks sad, but realistically sad about being broken up with at week five of a relationship.

Back at the hotel, a date card is given out, revealing that Luke, Jordan, Robby, James T, and Alex will be going on a group date with Jojo, leaving Chase and Derek for the 2-on-1. The group date is straight up “experience local culture,” where they walk around some markets and play some soccer and that’s literally the entire date. At this point I sent Wells a niche Avatar The Last Airbender reference on snapchat in hopes that he will realize that I am his true soulmate, not Jojo. He has yet to respond. Or open it.

At the cocktail party, James T tries to throw Jordan under the bus by telling Jojo that he was acting “entitled” about a poker game, but it really feels like the producers told him to talk bad about Jordan and he just sort of rambled off the first thing he could think of and then felt bad about the whole thing. It looked like a clear attempt for James to be given the group date rose, which is a bold move that usually pays off, but not in this case. Jojo tries to act sincere about it, but then talks to Jordan who says that it was a misunderstanding and he thinks James is probably confused, or Southern, or something. The group date rose ultimately goes to Luke, after he and Jojo make out for awhile.

Next, we have our 2-on-1 date with Chase and Derek. Going in, both men seem fairly confident that they’re in good standing with Jojo. The date is tango themed, where they play some music from Carmen and Jojo dances a tango symbolizing her love torn between two men. Derek plays up the emotion, while Chase could be a bag of rocks with googly eyes and a wig, and no one would know the difference. At dinner, Derek tells Jojo how strongly he feels about her, to which Jojo replies “I appreciate that,” which is exactly what everyone wants to hear after they tell someone that they’re falling in love. Chase mostly sits there while Jojo talks to him about how he’s hot, but hasn’t been open enough with her, and he agrees to talk more, I guess, and Jojo gives him the rose. On Derek’s ride out of the date, he very dramatically cries into the camera while repeating “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

The rose ceremony is tense, since Chase and Luke both have roses, while Jordan, Robby, Alex, and James T are left without them. The first rose is give to Robby (um okay????), and the second rose goes to Jordan. With one rose left, Jojo walks out of the rose ceremony into Chris Harrison’s arms, and they live happily ever after. Just kidding. But she does really walk out into Chris Harrison’s arms and tells him that she doesn’t want to give out the last rose. I was really hoping this meant that both Alex and James T would be going home and we would see some real drama between the alpha males who all have the same haircut, but an additional rose is brought out and both Alex and James get to stay. Alex is pretty whiny about it though, and thinks he got a “pity rose.”

And that is literally all that happened this week. The most exciting part of this episode was seeing if Wells would open the snapchat I sent him, and the commercial that aired starring formerly-of-this-season James F. We’re in the dry stages of the season, where the villainy is gone but the relationships aren’t solid enough yet to be interesting, but there’s only one more episode until hometown dates where we potentially get to see Aaron Rogers on The Bachelorette. Get excited, folks.